TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

This crazy contraption is Michaels Killian’s Sideways Bike. Killian is a software engineer in Dublin, Ireland and he came up with the idea while tinkering in his shed. A complex multi-stage chain transmission takes care of driving the wheels, and steering is done by moving the front and back wheels independently. To stop the rider slipping off, a unicycle saddle is used.

Killian says that the back-to-front balance, combined with the drifting ability of the independent wheels “affords you tremendous grace and motion.

The Wall Street Journal has an odd (as in why?) little piece on how satellite radio sweeties XM and Sirius are pulling support for their merger from the oddest places. Their Exhibit A is Women Involved in Farm Economics, which apparently accepted a invitation from an XM lobbyist to start stumping for the deal.

The group’s president, Pam Potthoff, says many rural families have come to rely on satellite radio. She also offers this legal reasoning:

Look at our meatpacking plants. The big three merge and are taking over more and more, and no one stops that. It seems we have different standards for different industries.

Hard core gamers can’t be satisfied playing just one character a once. That’s where multiboxing comes in. Hook up a bunch of computers and hit World of Warcraft, playing multiple characters at one time. I’m not sure why you would do this unless you were farming gold, but a chap named “gameslah” posts his truly amazing setup on Dual-Boxing.com.

47 PCs. 23 each for gameslah and his girlfriend, and one to act as a server. According to his post, only two of the machines have hard drives, the rest use PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) to boot over the network.

The world changing technology/art project/prank known as Orbo has taken a rain check. The demonstration of the magnetic free energy machine was due to start a couple days ago, but various delays caused by “hot lights” meant that nobody has seen either the exhibit or the live, streaming video feeds. Steorn, the people behind Orbo, have packed up and gone back home to Ireland.

From the press release:

Attempts to replace those parts affected by the heat led to further failures and as a result we have to postpone the public demonstration until a future date. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to all the people who had made arrangements to visit the demonstration or were planning on viewing the demonstration online.

Some of our fine readers took me to task for being too cynical in our previous coverage. Not cynical, just skeptical. And this latest incident doesn’t add to my confidence.

Made from tough cherry wood, these folding shelves claim to be “as light as ricepaper”. That’s unlikely, but they’re certainly pretty to look at, and offer lots of air flow to keep your gadgets cool. When I first saw these I thought “Why? What’s the point?” but there is a lot of hidden functionality in there.

Ace hacker DVD Jon, AKA Jon Lech Johansen (known for breaking the CSS protection on DVDs), has cracked the activation process on the iPhone. Phone Activation Server v1.0 is a Windows application which will bypass the registration required to unlock the iPhone’s functions. Without activation, the iPhone is a brick.

What does this mean? It means that you have a $600 8GB iPod. It also means you have a mail and internet device. Everything works except the phone and EDGE functions, but WiFi is a go.

US company Think-A-Move plans to release a tongue controlled wheelchair later this year. Tongue movements force air through the Eustachian tube, which connects the throat and the ear. A microphone in the ear detects air movement and then uses the data to control the chair. Left, right, up and down directions are detected very accurately (to 97%), but there is a training period so the software can learn, similar to voice recognition.

It is aimed primarily at quadriplegics who currently have to stick a controller in their mouths to navigate, although other uses are foreseen, ostensibly for rescue workers and the military, who often work with their hands full.

The USBiscuit is a thumbdrive stashed inside a European cookie, and is available from creator Chris Ollis in such flavors as Custard Creme and Bourbon. Better get ‘em overnighted.

These are the guys who are in line behind us. And they’re really, really, REALLY happy. Their de-facto leader? A man named Stanley Michael Jackson. He’s quite a character. I’ll have a picture of him up in a second.